


Between the Lines

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcoholism, Implied Past Non-Con, M/M, authorial catharsis!fic, writing is like therapy right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras has his reasons to deal harshly with Grantaire, but those reasons raise questions of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkmeme fill: [one of the Amis is raped by another Ami and keeps it a secret](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/9761.html?thread=775969#t775969). Uncomfortably semi-autobiographical, thus anonymous.

Grantaire is very good at talking and talking and saying nothing at all. The more his words and sentences pile onto each other, like carriages that turn a blind corner and can't help slamming into an already-catastrophic accident, the more certain it is that his misspent verbosity serves no purpose and was never going anywhere in the first place. It's when he uses few words that he really _means_ something. Then, as though to make up for the waste, he manages to pack paragraphs into each sentence; at least for someone capable of decoding each imploring expression, each nuance of his voice. And of course, the one person capable of decoding him is the only person he ever addresses that way.

"I believe in you," he says, and his eyes add _I'm sorry_ and _I still love you_ and _I may not love your beloved but I love the way she transfigures you_ and _she won you fair and square and defeat has never been so glorious to behold_.

"I don't deserve you," he says, and the tremble in his voice adds _no really I'm sorry_ and _I was drunk_ and _it was unforgivable_ and _but I was so very, very terrified you were slipping away from me before I even had you in the first place_.

Enjolras knows the others wonder why he is so brutally cold about rejecting these overtures, but Enjolras and Grantaire both know the real question is why Enjolras lets him stay instead of chasing him out like a dog or murdering him in his bed. Enjolras, who makes a habit of being scrupulously honest with himself, has turned this question over in his mind more than once. Why does he let Grantaire stay to be an infected thorn in his side? He doesn't fear the consequences of kicking Grantaire out; Grantaire is a guilt-ridden self-pitying wreck who knows exactly what he's done, and he's no danger to anyone but himself these days. Enjolras has wondered once or twice whether the love he took pains to bury alive after that night might be coming back to haunt him, and whether he might be indulging it. But that explanation doesn't satisfy him. It rings false.

Perhaps it boils down to this: hatred is a dangerous sentiment, and Enjolras mistrusts it in himself most of all. It would be too easy to hate Grantaire in his absence, or rather to hate the phantom that would linger in Enjolras' memory and gradually distort itself to fit his wrath. It would be too easy to decide he could never forgive Grantaire for violating his trust (and more than his trust) and do everything in his power to never have to see Grantaire again. It may be more painful to have him constantly there, this man who had almost been his lover, but it keeps him honest about Grantaire's charms as well as his faults.

And of course, the thing Enjolras wants most of all is for Grantaire to redeem himself. He _wants_ to forgive him.

But "I would do anything," Grantaire says, and despite his imploring eyes and the tremble in his voice, long experience adds, _except give up the bottle_.


End file.
